


Shake the Oaks

by lady_metroland3



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:53:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3095531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_metroland3/pseuds/lady_metroland3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For T, with all my love and frustration.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Shake the Oaks

**Author's Note:**

> For T, with all my love and frustration.

A large mahogany stag head stared damningly down at me, supine on the hardwood floor and aching all over. His points nearly touched the ceiling. I had been in this room only once before during my first visit to Francis’ country house. The sideboard that now loomed over me was the key indicator of where I was, as it was one of Francis’ favorite pieces and on his introductory tour.  
“I’d love to have it in the main hall, if only I had a team of Clydesdales to pull it,” he had explained, “A few years back the MFA down in Boston had asked grandfather about an acquisition, but of course he wouldn’t hear of it. Apparently they have another grand old thing quite like this one in storage.”  
After this short description, I’d helped Francis cover the behemoth up again. I could see from the rumpled dust cloth to the side that during the night I had deemed it once more ready for viewing. At least, so my drunken and forgotten reasoning had dictated.  
The sideboard itself, meticulously carved with fowl, fruit, and fantastic beasts, was only slightly weathered from a century of use. It had probably been in this room for decades. Around me were the shrouded counterparts of its original set, each so grand that they almost crowded the spacious room. I was lucky to not have hit my head on some table ledge or armrest, as I felt that it had certainly made impact with the floor before the rest of my body. It was not yet dawn, and the twilight flushed blue upon the cloths.  
As I sat up, hoping that my arms would soon stop feeling like they wanted to secede from their sockets, I tried to remember how I ended up in this part of the house. It was in an uninhabited wing, siding kept up on the outside but dusty and silent within. My last image from the night before had taken place out on the back porch, where Charles and Francis were no doubt still sleeping off the night’s abuses on wicker chairs. Henry and Camilla had been talking from either side of the kitchen. They hadn’t seen me at the doorway as Bunny blundered in a second before I entered, his Connecticut drawl exaggerated by brandy and made louder by the same. His voice carried even more when he was like this, so I must have retreated to this part of the house to escape it.  
My attention turned again to the sideboard; austere, traditional, ancient. Despite their money, neither Henry’s family (who probably didn’t care) nor Bunny’s (who pretended nothing else) could measure up to Francis’ Brahmin origins. Though raised a Catholic by his mother, Francis had told me that his grandfather’s people has been some of the lucky few to survive both the Mayflower voyage and the first few years in Plymouth colony. At the time, I laughed to myself about how it explained his Puritan dandy personal style. The twins’ family has come over even earlier, though beyond their aunts registering five-year-old Camilla in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, neither knew much more than genealogical folklore.  
I stood, instantly regretting the action, and steadied myself against the faded floral wallpaper that began to brighten in the dawn. Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought that I could feel vomit surging up from my stomach. The nausea passed over me without heave. High school in California should have primed me for some New England benders, but I never would have expected how these East Coasters drank. Though hangovers were almost always an accepted reality, it never quite seemed to hit most of them until the morning after. Bunny was the exception, as alcohol gave him an excuse to try his hand at humor that was at once wry and childish. He reasoned that it was because Yankees were more used to defending themselves against the cold, despite usually being the first to start slurring and staggering. Henry had almost agreed with him, mentioning the extreme winters in Missouri. His height in itself was more of an explanation to his resiliency.  
My eyes fell open and I saw that the sideboard was placed a good six inches away from the wall. A yellowed but perfectly intact craftsman’s label reading _Brüder Lutz, 1857_ was pasted onto its solid back. Under the typed letters _Property of Mssr Abraham Abernathy_ was written with pen and ink.  
My parents could barely tell me whether their ancestors had been English or Dutch or Norwegian. Remarkable, since the Papen name didn’t even reach back to pioneer times. Living in a state that saw buildings around a century old as precious national landmarks, Californians don’t tend to have such interest in their origins. Sometimes even Henry made me feel like Baby New Year with regards to family history.  
Suddenly the nausea hit again and I sat on the floor, back pressed against the sturdy sideboard. The covering cloth probably had a good few years of dust on it, but that didn’t quite register as I pulled it up over my face, letting the must and pine oil perfume lull me into a doze. 

I could have been asleep for any time between fifteen minutes to three hours, but judging from the dim morning light it could not have been that long when I heard footsteps moving quietly but intently down the hall. The door creaked open as I lay still, one eye peeking lazily though an open crease in the dust cloth.  
Two pairs of legs belonging to Henry and Camilla walked in, the former closing the door behind them with a muffled click. Had I slept through to the afternoon? Were they coming to find me, as we sometimes had to do when Charles decided to sleep in some nondescript nook of the property? I began to attempt straightening up, but the residual drunkenness delayed my reaction and I only disturbed the cloth enough to see the side of Henry’s jacketed torso, still facing the door. Camilla’s oversized, pilled tennis sweater almost brushed the wool of his dark suit as she stood between it and he, her tousled head just barely reaching his chest. As I had noted before, Henry had an unexpectedly large frame even when he wasn’t dwarfing the elfin Camilla. The width of his shoulders easily doubled hers. I somehow imperceptibly moved the cloth more in order to see their faces.  
For a moment they stood in silence, Camilla’s eyes downcast and Henry’s similarly so, his gaze landing right on the back of her neck. His broad hands framed the door, and I was reminded of a bear trying to intimidate Goldilocks. Neither had changed their clothing from the night before, though Camilla had lost her shoes somewhere and her bare legs looked almost childish next to Henry’s pressed trousers. I was about to speak, inwardly anticipating how they would jump when I made my presence known, but then Camilla looked up at Henry and arched her feet to kiss him gently. She lingered for a moment, arms at her sides and lips brushing his. My breathing seized and I was again unable to move.  
Just as Camilla seemed to be losing her balance, Henry clasped her shoulders and leaned down to deepen their kiss. Camilla was now pressing her own small hands against his chest and her arms became more caught between their bodies as Henry moved closer, moving his grasp down to her ribs and lower back, and then to her slim thighs. All the while their kiss transgressed from a careful gesture to a hushed and forceful embrace.  
As I sat there, stunned under the dust cloth, I knew it was too late to interrupt them. Despite my own feelings for Camilla, or perhaps because of them, they couldn’t know I was there. Her back was now pressed against the door and Henry effortlessly hoisted her up, both with the strength of his arms and the strategic pinning of his hips. I could now see that Camilla, the nymph of my fantasies, wore only light pink lace panties beneath her makeshift dress. Between my own heightening arousal and subsequent shame, I watched as she bucked her hips against Henry’s and slid her hands up to caress his hair. He broke their kiss and whispered something in her ear, to which Camilla replied, “Eamus ad mensam.”  
Henry swung Camilla from the door to another covered piece of furniture, surprisingly graceful enough that her toes barely touched the ground. She alighted on the cloth and leaned back as they resumed. I could have looked away, just as I could have tried to save Bunny, but any attempt would have probably been just as in vain and hurtful to myself. Discovery soon became my greatest fear, although I did turn my head slightly enough to see Camilla pushing Henry’s jacket off his shoulders. He stood from leaning over her and removed it entirely, folding and then laying it over the back of a nearby chair. Camilla watched all of this as an owl observes a field mouse, staring at him from her repose on the table, knees at least fifteen inches apart.  
A pause, and then with one swift movement she relinquished her sweater and tossed it behind Henry on the floor. He seemed to take her in like the vision she was, only the lace of her underwear adorning her pale, slender frame and matching the hue of her small pink nipples. Henry’s back was turned to me, and I could only guess his expression by staring at the black X of his suspenders. He kneeled and began to kiss her inner thigh, working his way up to her protruding hipbones while caressing her rosebud breasts. Camilla quietly gasped as he lightly pinched her nipples, and when he turned his head I could see that he was now nipping the other inner thigh. Francis’ dour Victorian ancestors now came to mind, how mortified they would have been to see their banquet table used this way.  
After a moment, Camilla touched her feet to the wide-planked floor. Henry gazed up at her and she began to unhook the gold-rimmed spectacles from behind his ear. He stayed her hand with as much tenderness as I had seen him hold his garden plants, and then spoke in Greek, 

Just as the wind  
in the mountains  
shakes the oaks  
asunder, so did  
Eros  
shake my soul. 

He spoke with little of the scholarly sharpness that pervaded his class time conversation or his extra-academic lectures. A lilt so unprecedented accompanied this recitation that I was half surprised he didn’t use accompanying hand gestures, but its intimacy made me now feel all the more an intruder. He then allowed Camilla to take his glasses and place them on the table, then placing his head against her naked chest with her cheek against his crown.  
The fragile moment did not last. Strong fingers took hold of Camilla’s panties and slid them down her legs. She slid off the table and stepped out of them almost obediently, and Henry set them beside his glasses. He again moved his mouth towards her pelvic bones but she grasped his jaw with one hand and pushed his shoulder with the other, motioning for him to stand. Henry did so, and then sat upon the covered sofa. Camilla watched him and I couldn’t stop myself from drinking in every visible inch of her. Not so voluptuous as Aphrodite or even Juno, but proportionate as though she had been painted. Flaxen hairs shined on her sex, the more ample but unkempt hair on her head hung around her sloping shoulders and was like a halo in the growing sunlight. From the way her ribcage moved, I could tell she was fighting heavy breathing.  
Henry, who sat erect with his hands on his knees, melted against the sofa upon the touch of her hands on his shoulders. He was visibly aroused, and without his glasses one could guess slight unease in those dark blue eyes. I could not imagine that Henry had much prior experience with women before Camilla, normally an ambiguous beauty but now more gorgeous and haunting with every passing moment.  
With one slim arm she caressed his thigh and with the other swiftly put her hand between his legs to press the taut fabric, eliciting a short, muffled moan from behind Henry’s lips. Camilla then slipped his suspenders off and climbed atop him, balancing her shins on the tops of his thighs. Despite her girlishness, that quiet serenity I admired and came to lust after, anyone who had seen her on campus, or had even known her so well as Bunny, would never have believed the ferocity with which she now took Henry’s lips with hers. She deftly unbuttoned his shirt and then Henry removed his trousers. Each garment discarded, unfolded, Henry now struggled to remove his boxer briefs as Camilla ground against him. He groaned again more audibly, a single sound with more expression than anything I would ever hear him say.  
Camilla leaned back, her flushed legs on either side of his almost pallid thighs. She inserted both index fingers into the waistband of his underwear. Committed by any other girl, this action would have been saccharine, almost cutesy. Camilla, a woman as I now saw her, was not cloyingly asking. My view of her back, and all that was spread beneath it, afforded me the ability to observe her tight muscles, how they clenched in anticipation. She straightened up and Henry helped her to remove his underwear, then he took off his black socks as she balanced on his lap. Without making myself feel any worse, I will concede that Henry was also very well proportioned with regards to size.  
Now he clutched Camilla’s waist and guided her down, she using her grip on his shoulders to lower herself atop him, provoking a sharp intake of breath from him and a pleasured whimper from her that made my hair stand on end. They gradually quickened pace with each thrust, and though he was beneath Camilla Henry was not necessarily in control. She rode each movement of his hips as though vaulting. Soon he almost sat up straight again, eyes pressed shut, his shoulders twitching as she dug her chipped manicured nails into them. She began to annunciate more frequently and Henry opened his eyes to stare at her with the same constant and unwavering concentration as when he read.  
She cried out quickly and they lessened their frantic pace, Camilla now more fluid in her movement but still responsive to every subsequent thrust. I remember how a small cry escaped her lips each time. A few moments of this, and Henry’s almost set glare dissolved with a relieved groan to accompany Camilla’s faint exclamations of ecstasy. Then, out of nowhere, she bit into Henry’s collarbone. His eyes closed again and he turned his face towards the molded ceiling, mouthing a silent scream. She eventually let go, leaving the beginnings of a lilac mark on his neck, and leaned back as Henry inclined his forehead to her bare shoulder.  
The Lovers. Collapsed together like that, I recalled slides from a required art history seminar from before my transfer to Hampden. Many artists had tried to capture that impossible afterglow, and those who didn’t exactly fail were habitually censored. Again the room was silent, save for their rhythmic breathing. It was now almost filled with daylight, reflecting off their skin like marble.  
Henry spoke first in his usual monotone, “I’m waiting for you to turn into a tree.”  
Camilla chuckled low in her throat and tilted his head up to softly kiss him once more. Just then a metal pot somewhere across the house clattered onto the floor, followed by a chorus of Charles’, Bunny’s, and Francis’ harassed protests; something about oatmeal and a broken tile.  
Henry and Camilla had both started at the noise and sat clutching each other, as though to strike at anyone who came through the door. The bruise on Henry’s collarbone extended up to his neck and was now plainly visible, as were the finger-sized purple marks on Camilla’s lower back and thighs. After a few seconds they relaxed, and she climbed off of him to dress herself without a word. Her task swiftly accomplished she turned to leave, not looking at Henry until he caught her by the wrist.  
Even without his glasses, Henry’s eyes could chill an icicle. Camilla’s reddened cheeks broke into a smile that I had never seen on her before, or since. She pulled the sofa’s dust cloth back to reveal a hideous but preserved brocade, and put it over his shoulder. Henry looked as though he wore a chiton, and he even allowed himself a small smirk. Camilla bent down and gave him one last lingering kiss, his hand momentarily entangled in her hair, before leaving him for the door that she open and shut with care to its crying hinges.  
As her footsteps faded down the hallway, Henry stood and quickly redressed, finally resuming his glasses so he could find the cigarettes in his jacket pocket. He cracked an ancient window and lit one of them, leaning against the table and its rumpled cloth. After one long drag he stared at the closed door and said, “You can come out now, Richard.”  
It was a miracle I didn’t vomit, the way my stomach dropped. I groggily stood, taking care that my senseless legs didn’t fall out from beneath me, not wanting to meet his gaze but feeling it boring into me nonetheless. The dust cloth couldn’t go back over the sideboard without help, so I left it on the floor with plans to ask someone later. Anything to not think about the humiliation of my current situation. Henry just sat and breathed smoke into the air like a calm dragon.  
After what seemed like five minutes of me making more of a fool of myself, I grabbed the doorknob and stumbled out in haste. Before closing it behind me, I glimpsed Henry’s magnified eyes penetrating the space that Camilla had just left. Only later did I remember where I had seen such a glare before; art history again, slides of desecrated, eyeless deities with lights shining through their lately occupied sockets. 

The next day, Henry wore a large scarf that would make frequent appearances in warm and cold weather during the weeks leading up to Bunny’s death. Camilla never showed any hint of discomfort but was careful to wear dark stockings even before the temperature dropped.


End file.
